If you want to really get into it, and really understand what's going on, get ColorThink Pro as mentioned by lfeagan, and learn how to use all of it's features. I once saw someone's article that said something like: "If you don't have Colorthink Pro, go buy it. Seriously. Don't think about it, don't wait, just go buy it." He was right.

If you want to really get into it, and really understand what's going on, get ColorThink Pro as mentioned by lfeagan, and learn how to use all of it's features. I once saw someone's article that said something like: "If you don't have Colorthink Pro, go buy it. Seriously. Don't think about it, don't wait, just go buy it." He was right.

While I agree with the statements regarding the usefulness, I hate to suggest someone run out and spend $$$ for ColorThink Pro on day 1 of their learning. You can learn a lot from reading and studying without ColorThink Pro at your disposal. If you want to get more detailed insight into how things will behave with a specific image in different scenarios after you have some of the basic concepts down, create another post (likely months from now) and either myself or someone else will likely be kind enough to respond and may well use ColorThink Pro as part of their analysis. I have done this for others on LuLa who were having WTF?!?! moments with their print output. Many of the graphs/plots on the LuLa and other photo websites are created using ColorThink Pro.

I spent years reading about color before buying ColorThink Pro. Looking back, I wish I had bought it earlier. However, it took me quite a while just to get all the concepts firmly in my head. Once you start going down the road of being serious about color, the time and tool$ start to add up. If you are into photography as a casual hobby and will be targeting the web mostly and the occasional print, then ColorThink Pro is just too much money.

Maybe one thing that hasn't been spelt out so far is that flat (2D) gamut comparisons on web sites and books don't really fully explain the issues of gamut comparison. To really get an understanding of what's going on you need a 3D gamut mapping tools that allows you to look at all the various parts of the gamut for many directions and see where gamuts overlap to get an idea of what what ranges of colours fail to be displayed or printed.Colorthink does this very well, but is a top end tool that most people won't need.

Depending on your OS there are some freeware tools available that can help you with 3D gamut comparisons, without needing to make such a major investment as Colorthink. There are also a few web sites that allow 3D gamut comparisons free of charge that can help get an understanding of the issues eg http://www.iccview.de/

Good points above. If you are on a Mac and just want to compare the gamut volumes of two devices, you can do this with the built-in, free, ColorSync Utility.

1) Launch the ColorSync Utility2) Choose the "Profiles" tab3) Select a profile4) Click the triangle in the upper-left of the gamut picture and select "Hold for Comparison" (first screenshot below, the triangle is directly to the right of the label "Lab Plot:")5) Select another profile (second screenshot below)

I have found those graphs very informative indeed. Be aware that iccview does not work with anything except type 2 profiles. The type 4 profiles that the Xrite system generates by default can not be used, you need to specify type 2 profiles specifically when you create your own profiles if you want to use them for comparison. Most manufacturer's profiles are still type 2.

Note that things like gamut volume do not tell the overall story about a particular media. For instance, a media with lower gamut volume might have better highlight separation than one with a larger volume. Or a particular relatively low gamut media might have better blues, or reds, or shadow separation, or something. The list goes on. In the end, you need to do your own visual comparisons using your own characteristic images and aesthetics.

FWIW I am presently leaning toward wide gamut canvases like Epson Gloss, in spite of recent exceedingly painful substrate changes. It'll knock your eyeballs right out of your head. But I still have a few images that look better on matte canvas with 1/3 the gamut volume. Life is like that.

I have to ask, what is the practical result of this kind of study? That is, how does one apply the findings for the purpose of enhancing the end printing results?

Quote

FWIW I am presently leaning toward wide gamut canvases like Epson Gloss, in spite of recent exceedingly painful substrate changes. It'll knock your eyeballs right out of your head. But I still have a few images that look better on matte canvas with 1/3 the gamut volume. Life is like that.

All the comments Iíve read agree with you, which is not surprising. Itís a pricy material. How does this look without putting on a veneer coating? I read that a spray coating is required for this canvas, as opposed to roll coating, and I donít have the ability to spray coating at this time.

It helps in a number of ways but here are a couple. First, you can compare two gamuts, say, your monitor profile against ProPhotoRGB and see just how much colour is potentially in your images that your monitor can't display. You can do the same thing with your monitor profile and a paper profile to see if the paper you want to use has a wider gamut than your monitor. This can be helpful in showing why a "match" between your monitor and your print isn't the ultimate goal of a properly colour-managed workflow.

You can do the same thing with a paper profile and the colour space of your images to see how much and where the paper may be out of gamut compared to your images. You can then choose a paper that will better suit the gamut of the image if you want so that fewer colours have to be remapped by the rendering intent. Our image files are tagged with a working space like ProPhoto or AdobeRGB so it's not exactly comparing the colours in your image to the gamut of the paper but it's as close as we can get at the moment, I believe.

You can also compare two working spaces (e.g. ProPhoto vs Adobe) to see just how much colour you're potentially giving up by tagging your RAW images with Adobe rather than ProPhoto in conversion and then make a more educated decision which approach to use.

. . .All the comments Iíve read agree with you, which is not surprising. Itís a pricy material. How does this look without putting on a veneer coating? I read that a spray coating is required for this canvas, as opposed to roll coating, and I donít have the ability to spray coating at this time.

I think it looks fine without a coating, but I also think the claims that it doesn't need a coating are laughable. I'm not sure which manufacturer claimed it first, but now many of them are saying they have a gloss canvas that doesn't need a coating.

I started using gloss canvas just before I gave in and moved to coating. (I'm now another person who wishes I started spraying sooner.) Some varnishes seem to re-liquify the ink. If you use really light pressure and few passes to get a base coat on, you can sometimes get away with it, although you'll occasionally wreck a print and that's not the best way to start out with a base coat anyway. I did a few prints on Breathing Color's Crystalline gloss canvas with their Timeless coating, however it's not a recommended way to go. Basically, if it re-liquifies, but you don't smush it around and it dries, you're generally OK. Not smushing it around is the tough part.

I also found that IJ Technologies' Black Diamond top coat rolls fine onto their gloss and satin canvases, and that's officially supported by them. There's something different in its formulation that it doesn't eat the ink on gloss canvas like some others. Granted, it's very pricey at ~ $268 for a 44"x40'. (But I also found a higher gamut than Epson or Breathing Color.) It does curl the heck out of it as it dries. Like, your large canvas print is about ready to fit in a 2" diameter shipping tube! But, it stretched OK, and I never found any damage due to it.